FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT CREATIONISM - PAGE 3

Britain's premier scientific society has dumped its education director after he suggested that discussing creationism in science classes might be a way to engage students whose religious faith disavows the theory of evolution. Rev. Michael Reiss, a biologist and Church of England minister, was asked to resign after his comments "led to damage to the society's reputation," the Royal Society, Britain's oldest scientific organization, said in a letter Tuesday. In a speech at a Royal Society science fair last week in Liverpool, England, Reiss suggested that raising the theory of creationism in science classes might be the only way to engage the approximately 10 percent of students who have been taught at home and in church that evolution is incompatible with their religious beliefs.

By Tom Hundley, the Tribune's chief European correspondent, based in London | November 10, 2006

When Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle and other deep thinkers of the day founded the Royal Society in 1660, "science" as a field of knowledge did not yet exist. So they called their new organization the Royal Society of London for Improving of Natural Knowledge. The idea, according to Stephen Cox, the society's current executive secretary, was "to replace unsound thinking about the world with knowledge based on observation and experimentation." The Royal Society quickly became the embodiment of the Enlightenment, and over the centuries its greatest minds--from Newton and Darwin in the 18th and 19th Centuries to Crick and Watson in the 20th--have profoundly changed the way we look at the world.

Conservative Christians are demanding that creationism be taught with evolution out of fairness. I'm all for fairness. I'll be happy to let them teach creationism in my science classroom, as soon as they let me teach evolution in their church.

The story by J.M. Hirsch, Associated Press, on the Rev. Paul Norwalt's school in Merrimack, N.H. (Metro, Aug. 14), contains a serious distortion. Hirsch describes creationism as "the belief that God created all life and matter." That is a central belief of all Christians (along with Jews and Muslims), including thousands of legitimate scientists. The special claim of creationism is that God began human life directly, without any earlier evolutionary stages.

Creationists concede the credibility of science when they insist on teaching creationism as science and not religion or philosophy. They adopt names like "creation science" in the hopes of riding the coattails of science to credibility, while rejecting the methods and assumptions that earned science this credibility in the first place. If they want to use the name "science," they must use scientific standards. Those standards require that any scientific theory be testable and subject to being disproven.

The board of Georgia's second-largest school district Thursday gave teachers permission to introduce varying views about the origin of life, including creationism. The proposal, approved unanimously by the Cobb County school board, says the district believes "discussion of disputed views of academic subjects is a necessary element of providing a balanced education." Opponents said it was a backdoor way to bring religion into the classroom, but supporters said the board's choice encouraged academic freedom.

There is unanimous agreement among respectable scientists that evolution is an established fact--not just a theory to compete with creationism. Recently "creationism" has, pardon the expression, evolved into "intelligent design," a pseudoscientific version of the same belief. Sadly the wall of separation between church and state is under assault from an organized campaign mounted by religious extremists. The religious right is a significant factor in Republican politics. This administration and the Republican members of Congress constantly pander to this base.

A one-eyed, noseless kitten will be the centerpiece of a new museum intended to promote creationism. John Adolfi plans to feature the remains of the kitten, Cy, at The Lost World Museum when it opens later this year in Phoenix, N.Y. Adolfi wrote on the museum's Web site: "Evolution states that millions of mutations over millions of years with the help of environmental `pressures' can lift a species ... Do positive mutations exist? The mutations I have seen, like Cy, are either neutral or negative."

A Tennessee professor who teaches creationism has been named to lead the Center for Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Kurt P. Wise, currently a professor at Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn., is replacing William Dembski, a leading proponent of intelligent design, who left to take a teaching job closer to his Texas home. Wise was also director of Bryan College's Center for Origins Research, which supports the "validity of the biblical account" of creation, according to its Web site.

Fund mass transit Imagine rush hour with all the Metra riders on the road. I would rather not; it takes me 30 minutes as it is to get from Elgin to Schaumburg in the morning and 40 to 50 minutes to get home! We need a solution to transit funding issue. Catherine Hamilton Elgin Funding proposal I propose we take Gov. Rod Blagojevich's travel budget, which allows him to jet back and forth to Springfield, and bet it on the horses at Arlington Park. When that money is gone, then he can start driving on the overcrowded Chicagoland expressways.